Machismo Is Not Manhood
by on Feb 11th, 2010 at 12:22 am
Machismo: A strong or exaggerated sense of manliness; an assumptive attitude that virility, courage, strength, and entitlement to dominate are attributes or concomitants of masculinity (Random House Dictionary)
- A strong or exaggerated sense of masculinity stressing attributes such as physical courage, virility, domination of women, and aggressiveness.
- An exaggerated sense of strength or toughness (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language)
Real men eat meat raw. Real men bench press twice their body weight. Real men drink themselves sober, never lose a fight, and fight often. Real men get the girl, use the girl, and get another girl. Real men grunt, burp, take no prisoners in the corporate world, always get what they want, and fear nothing.
Have you ever seen these types of qualities promoted in movies, sporting events, or advertising? If not, you probably did not watch the Super Bowl or any of the commercials that permeated the annual religious festival of our culture. This vision of manhood, which is regularly held out to us is nothing more than pure machismo.
Have you ever been exposed to machismo in the church? Unfortunately, well-meaning Christians have promoted this false image just to get the attention of men, and I think that we need to be very careful about what we are doing when we bring machismo into our ministries. Before I explain, I have to admit that I am a former abuser of this very issue.
I once held an event called “The Ultimate Man’s Night” where we ate steak for dinner and breakfast, built a massive bonfire, lit it with a kerosene-soaked softball that was launched from a trebuchet twenty-five feet from the wood, watched Gladiator, Braveheart, and took time off to beat each other to pieces with medieval weapons. Yep, I had no clue then!
Manhood and machismo are two different things and we must be careful to maintain the distinction, especially if we are trying to become men who bear God’s image in our generation. Biblical manhood is so far beyond the highly sensual, aggressive, and self-indulgent vision of machismo that we become counterproductive in promoting machismo or tolerating it in our spiritual life.
Please understand, I’m not calling for a moratorium on meat-eating, physical activities, moving up the corporate ladder, developing a relationship with a girl for marriage, nor am I clueless to the fact that men of God in Scripture demonstrated imposing acts of masculinity (like David killing giants, Samson knocking buildings down with bare hands, or Paul getting back up and going into a town whose residents had just stoned him the day before). My plea to you is to consider that raw masculinity is dangerous because it is not refined and honed under the skilled hands of a man who knows how to use it.
Next week, I plan on sharing just a few ideas of how biblical manhood is different from machismo, and I intend to use biblical examples to prove my point. In the meantime, I would challenge you to investigate where your idea for true masculinity is found.